As I have started to sell full hives, a lot more full hives are in my backyard than normally at this time of year. In fact, I have usually moved any Overwintered Nucs (transitioned to full hives) out to other yards by the end of March. The yards are just full of Nucs. But, I have actually been moving full Hives to my backyard this year, as I sell off some of my force.

This is important because I did something yesterday that I have never done before. I was checking a hive that I was about to sell to make sure it wasn’t going into swarm mode. Of course, the daggone thing already had capped queen cells. I had checked it a month ago and, based on my experience, it should just be filling out about 70% of the hive bodies. But, this queen had other ideas. She had fully capped both upper hive bodies and the workers had created a bunch of queen cells in both. In the bottom deep, she had laid eggs in about 4 frames. Most were larvae, but none were capped.

Normally, I might create a Nuc or two when out in the field, but heck – this is my backyard. I can do anything I want, since checking on them frequently is very easy. So, I decided to take all three boxes and create hives. I have no idea if the queen flew the coop or not, but I ended up placing the two upper bodies, with lots of capped brood and queen cells, off on their own in the yard, with new bottoms and tops. I left the Deep where it was, to collect the returning foragers and begin building a queen from scratch.

At this time of year, it is hard to screw up, but we shall see. I will check the ones with queen cells in 1 week and the other in 3. I hope to have 3 hives at that point!